Quick story:

So I broke down at Keevil. But I called the AA, and it couldn't have been more than 20 minutes that the patrol turned up. The guy quickly set to to work; he was helpful, friendly, professional and although he couldn't sort the problem he really was good and I'm sure everybody who was there would agree. He also towed me off the site as he said some of the recovery truck drivers would have a problem recovering from private land.

After waiting slightly embaressed by the gate, I was joined by John with a blue Westfield and his mate Ian. John's Westfield had a broken gearbox, and he'd already called the RAC. He'd told the RAC of the fault, and they'd agreed that it needed recovering and were going to sent a flat bed.

So we waited, and talked about cars, and John and Ian were good enough to share their sandwiches with me as I was starving by this point. After about an hour, a truck turns up from the AA for me, but not an AA truck, one from a local garage. He takes one look at my car and says "I'll never get that on there", and he was right. He showed us the angle that his flatbed would go to, and there was no way you'd get any S2000, or any sports car on there without damaging the front bumper and exhaust. Black mark for the AA.

But he stuck around for a while whilst waiting for instructions, and was genuinely interested in the cars and was very friendly. After a while he told me the AA were sending one of their proper breakdown flatbeds (mine's been on one before so I know it's okay).

Another hour and we see an RAC vehicle approaching. John had been told they were sending a flat bed, but this was just a patrol van, and he's not amused. John says somewhat sarcastically "how am I meant to get this in the back of that then? Two and a half hours, and you send a van". The RAC man gets all agressive and starts saying "why is that my problem", and before you know it he's back in his van and driving off. I'd walked away by this point, and Ian wasn't that close by either.

John's obviously quite annoyed by all this, and phones the RAC. Apparently the patrol man is saying all three of us were hurling abuse at him and he felt threatened and so left - which is completely untrue. And now the RAC say because of this they're leaving him to "make his own arrangements". Great when you're in a field in Wiltshire.

Ian starts phoning other people, and finds one that'll do it for

 

Thanks for the update mate.

Its a shame they dont appear to try very hard in the field to diagnose faults IME.

 

My reason for chopping my longstanding AA membership for the RAC was that the latter still recover your vehicle from an accident when the former don't.

Valuable if you don't plan on making an insurance claim, or don't want to wait for the insurance company to organise something.

That said, of the half a dozen times I have called out AA or RAC, or their local reps, they have always been good. Most recently an RAC man used an impressive level of ingenuity and resourcefulness to deal with a bike tyre problem that threatened to halt me in my tracks half way home on a 180 mile trip on Hogmanay.

 

i'll stick up for the RAC here.

i had a very very good experience with the RAC when i wrote my car off. bearing in mind that they aren't supposed to be a free recovery service for accident damaged vehicles, and that my car was supidly hard to get onto the flatbed as the rear suspension arm was snapped and was digging into the floor so the winch couldn't drag the car up onto the flatbed. and to top it off, the cover wasn't even mine, i used my mates membership.

 

Never had a bad experience with the AA.

Other than having a broken car which required the call-out in the first place.

 

As with everything else, the service you get often depends on how good the phone monkey that initially takes your call is.

I'm with the RAC and they've always provided a good service.

When my engine blew they turned up with the right sort of flatbed. They even rang me to tell me that there had been a glut of breakdown's that day and there was going to be an extra hours delay to get the right sort of flatbed to me.

to the RAC man making out that he was threatened though.

 

I have always thought the AA are excellent.

When some ejit hit the side of my first S2000 the AA came out and collected my car, and took me to my Honda dealer, very swift response too.

 

To be honest as long as they get me / the car home in a sensible amount of time I'm not too worried about fixing it then and there.

 

Used them all over the years, but for the last 4 or 5 years have been with Britannia Rescue who, in my opinion, are head and shoulders above the rest.

 

Maybe, but they must have a computerised system. You could understand them not believing the motorist and insisting on sending out a van first, but whilst the AA took 20 minutes to do that, the RAC took 2 and a half hours.